"It's the beginning of the end..."

2008年9月7日星期日

Hello from Seattle!!

Gah it's my first day in Seattle, and I'm trying to keep up with this blog. I feel like I'm travelling with u all so I need to take you all with me on this journey in Seattle.
It's almost 11pm here in Seattle. Had around 20 hours of travelling, sat on the plane until my butt went numb. Haha I feel proud of myself that I din cry at the airport today. Not much feelings- meaning I have grown up. The flight to Seattle was quite smooth. Talked to an ang moh guy from LA on the first flight to Tokyo. He is a teaching assistant in UCLA and we managed to chat for quite a long time on American universities and the Singapore education system. I'm quite surprised that I can talk to an ang moh for that long. Tokyo airport is just full of shuaiges in black suits walking around as security guards. I was like o.O OMG i want to be a terrorist so that u all can come after me LOL.

The flight to Seattle from Tokyo took another 10+ hours, and the guy next to me was a jap who cant speak english and who keeps speaking to me in jap thinking that i can understand him.

I reached Seattle at around 12am Singapore time, which is 9am in Seattle. Cleared the customs rather quickly. My host (i shall call him 'Ojisan')came to pick me up. He's a really nice old japanese american who is hosting me for free for this first week, before i move in to my apartment. So now I'm in their basement typing all these while they're sleeping in a room next to me. I hope I'm not too noisy. :S but i really cant sleep now LOL It's like 2pm in Singapore!
I was a little bit shocked when Ojisan lugged my 23kg big suitcase up the stairs to his house before I knew it. He's 81 this year! Haha but he's really fit and he drives a van. So when I first touched down he drove me to UW (my uni) and around the campus. The campus is freaking huge and is like my dream campus! Oh before I forgot, I must say my first impression of Seattle is great. It's sunny today, but the weather is cooling. You see blue waters everywhere amidst the low buildings when you're driving to town. The city is very clean and full of greenery, with mountains as the setting. Everywhere on the streets u see hippy people dressed in hippy wear, and even the pets here are damn hippy. I saw this car raced pass with a dog stucking his head of the window and super enjoying the wind with his flapping ears LOL.
Ok, where am i? So ojisan drove me to campus, to my apartment and back to his house which is pretty far from the school. My room is really nice and cosy. The house is not that big but it's very homely and cosy and I felt so comfortable here. Maybe that's why I'm still not that homesick for now.
I took a shower and followed Ojisan to his church. It's a japanese american church and the people there are really friendly. The service was over by the time we got there and Ojisan and his wife had lunch there while the people did some sharing sessions. My stomache was feeling upside down and I couldn't eat anything. It was like 4am in Sg then and I tried not to shut my eyes while my entire system was not functioning during the sharing sessions hahaha. But I'm not trying to be Christian or anything, just felt bad to turn down my host and thought that I might be a great experience to see how a jap american church in Seattle is like. The people are from all age groups and everyone is full american inside while they look asian outisde (if u get what i mean..)

After church Ojisan and Obachan took me to downtown Seattle. We stopped by the Olympic park where there're some "Olympic" scultures (haha they look nothing related to Olympics to me leh). It's next to Elliot bay, one of the many famous waters in Seattle. The view is super nice. If you know me well u'll know I really enjoy looking at waters (Sea, lake etc). So i tink next time when i'm emo Seattle is the perfect place for me.
After that we went back home. I dumped myself on the bed and slept like pig till dinner time. Ojisan specially went out to pack chinese food for me and I'm really grateful for that. T-T THANK GOD (even though I'm not your devout follower) for letting these Angels come in to my life to help me at this stage. I really don't know how i'll feel without their help on this first day.
Ok that's all for now. My Seattle tour hasnt started yet. I guess there're be more pics to flood this blog this week. Tomorrow I'm going down to the school area (which we call the U-district here) to get my bank account done and take at look at my furniture-less apartment LOL.

P.S.- I still couldn't believe I'm in Seattle, and I'm gonna be here for a year. I guess this 'i am in a dream' feeling will last for quite some time before I can accept this reality, that I'm on the other side of the globe.

Love,

“Jd dropped by Kynthos at 22:48”

What's the time over at...?

Seattle

Singapore City